Garden is surviving the heat... Just!

Our veggies garden is surviving the heat but only just! We moved to Orange 7 years ago and this is the hottest summer yet. Normally our climate is relatively mild with only a few hot days/weeks and those mainly in February. Hopefully the rumours of a cool change next week are true. 

The chickens and roosters sheltering during the hottest part of the day.

Various views if the veggie patch. Everything is growing bug taking a very long time to fruit. 

Bit hard to tell what is veggie plant and what is weed...

Strawberries are growing so well, so lunch green growth but no flowers or fruit. Not sure why yet?

sea beanie a success!

Sea beanie with Bartok

I embarked on what felt like a rather ambitious project early in December and to my surprise the cables became easier and I finished it last night! Didn't take as long as I'd expected and once I got used to the cables I really started to make progress!
I had been looking for a project that had a nice pattern for a beanie that would suit our alpaca yarn. After some searching I settled on Sea Beanie by Elena Nodel. I really wanted to make it in Tux's cria yarn for Andrew but I only have a very small quantity of it so decided to test the pattern out in Julie in a size for me. Success!
Needless to say… I have already cast on the stitches to start Andrew's hat in Tux's yarn!

Sea beanie made in adagio alpacas Julie yarn

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all!

We are thankful for the rain today.

Fairy garden and garlic

We (our au pair, who is just as addicted to craft as I am, and I) decided to make something special for my boy's girlfriend (they are 2 and he is besotted). She is crazy about fairies. I have a beautiful book of 100 flowers to knit and crotchet by Lesley Stanfield which I have been wanting to play with, so we decided to make her a fairy garden. 

I love the butterflies...

And in a special box...

Hope she loves them!

In other news we harvested the garlic! I had fun braiding some of it. 

alpaca shearing 2013

Shearing alpacas is always interesting. They are tied up and shorn one side then flipped over and the other side is shorn. Some taken it in their stride, others like our young wether squeal the whole way through! It is amazing the difference in their size and presence before and after shearing! 

You can see the difference in the photos above and left, Silver Rose our pride and joy with her fleece a few days ago on the left and Silver Rose and Tux in the photo above. They look so skinny!

They sulk a bit but as you can see above Tux was still willing to talk to me!

I couldn't help but show you the snow pea growing in our veggie patch and I love this photo of our new chooks enjoying their new accommodation!

Chickens finally!

We finally have some (hopefully laying) barnevelder hens on our property! As the old isa browns died off we have been wanting to replenish with barnevelders but they have been very hard to source locally. We found some 1st year layers at Parkes and my hubby went to pick then up today! I really hope there will be fresh eggs to be had over the coming days! 

We also picked up some young roosters to fatten up. They are a bit cute which might make them a little difficult to eat! I couldn't get a good photo as they were busy running from the toddler!

The one remaining isa brown chook is giving them a bit of a hard time but hopefully they will all settle down after roosting tonight. 

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

With a small boy in the house we are getting organised for Christmas earlier than we have in previous years. Putting up this quilt has made it feel like Christmas is on its way! I finished this quilt last year after a few years working knit sporadically. It is a Kellie Wulfsohn pattern and I enjoyed every minute working on it! 

The cream walks look terrible! One day we will fix that...

Milo vest finished!

alpacas and milo vest

I love this pattern! It was my first time knitting in the round and cables but very easy!  The pattern is from tiKKi details here. I would definitely knit this again. The size is to fit my boy next winter… Lets hope I guessed right!

The yarn came from this beautiful animal, silver rose. So lovely to knit with. 

Silver Rose

Proper farm!

Wow we feel like a proper farm! We have 9 soon to be 10 alpacas, 6 head of cattle...

Well I might be dreaming about the proper farm bit but 4 heifers have come visiting for a few months. We have an extraordinary amount of feed for our property size and one of our friends farm is low on feed so its a win-win situation! The photo above is of the heifers arriving and below are the alpacas milling about checking out the newcomers.

Garlic

First garlic of the season!